Oral history interview with Elizabeth Williams, 1999

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Elizabeth Williams
INTERVIEWER: Eric Elliott
DATE: March 29, 1999
[Begin Interview]
EE: My name is Eric Elliott, and today is March 29, 1999, and I'm at the home of Elizabeth Williams. Tell me, is this pronounced “Glou-cester” or “Glou-chester,” or how do you pronounce it?
EW: “Gloster.”
EE: “Gloster,” just like they do in England.
EW: Like Dr. Foster.
EE: Sounds good. Well, I'm at the home of Elizabeth Williams in Gloucester, North Carolina, and thank you for having us here today. This is an interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro [UNCG]. Miss Williams, as I told you, we're just going to go through about thirty questions, and I have a feeling in the course of our conversation I'll probably have a few more just to follow up. But I'll start out with you like we do with everybody, and just if you could tell us a little bit about where you were born and where you grew up.
EW: I was born in New Bern [North Carolina], and I grew up in New Bern and Gloucester.
EE: New Bern, in Craven County, up the road. Tell me a little bit about your family. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
EW: Well, I've outlived just about everybody. My sister died a couple of years ago. I had no brothers.
EE: And she was an older sister or younger sister?
EW: She was an older sister. She was the one who went to North Carolina College for Women [NCCW, now UNCG]. So that's the third name.2
EE: They've gone through about half a dozen, I think.
EW: I went to North Carolina College for Women, then Woman's College [WC]. I didn't change but they changed the name. [chuckling]
EE: Tell me about your parents for a minute. Where were they from, what did they do?
EW: They were from New Bern.
EE: They were both from New Bern?
EW: My father's people came from down here from—I think they all moved to New Bern about 1850, and left one aunt, my daddy's—I think it was my daddy's great-aunt, down here. She was a tutor and a companion to an invalid lady. The lady died, and the man married her to keep her on with his little surviving son. And the man died and the son inherited. Then the son died and he left everything to my aunt, my great-great-great—I don't know.
EE: And that's this piece of property we're sitting on right now?
EW: That's this piece.
EE: So this property is in the family at least back to the 1850s then?
EW: Yeah, before 1850.
EE: Before 1850. So your dad met your mom in New Bern?
EW: Yes, they grew up in New Bern.
EE: Okay, so they knew each other growing up and got married?
EW: I've always thought it was rather interesting because it was not an elopement, but they apparently—I don't know whether my father's family didn't want him to marry her, or my mother's family didn't want her to marry him, but they sent him to Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
EE: This was in New York State?
EW: Yes, and sent her to Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, where she had an aunt. And when they came home they got married. [chuckling]
EE: So they sent them to two different parts of the country and it still didn't keep them apart. [chuckling]
EW: No.3
EE: Well, that's just like young people, you can't tell them what to do.
EW: You can't tell them what to do.
EE: What did your dad do for a living?
EW: My dad was part of a family company called Meadows Company. He was superintendent of a fertilizer factory which is part of Meadows Company.
EE: Okay, what about your mom?
EW: Mother was a homemaker until the Depression, and then she worked at Belk's. And then she went with a church and established a tea room, which became a little restaurant, which she ran the rest of her life. She died in '38.
EE: You told me that she went to NCCW. What was it when she went? She went to Normal [State Normal and Industrial College]?
EW: Her sister went to—Let's see, my daddy's sister went to the school when it was founded. I don't think she was in the first class, but she was in about the first group.
EE: What was her first name, do you remember?
EW: Elizabeth. I was named after her.
EE: So you're named for her, okay.
EW: Elizabeth Temperance Williams.
EE: Temperance? Are you Methodist, by any chance? [chuckling]
EW: She was. I'm Episcopalian.
EE: I was going to say, that sounds like a Methodist name for that time period. [chuckling]
EW: Well, it came over with her—I think it was her great-aunt, about 1840 from England with Thomas Williams, who became the founder of the Williams side of my family, her son. And they lived on the corner of Craven and South Front Street.
EE: So your folks both went to college. Your sister—Let's see now, when did you move to Gloucester? You said you were born in New Bern, when did you move back to here?
EW: Well, they kept this place—Well, they set it up in 1900 after my great-great-great-aunt died. They set it up for the men. They brought horses down and they hired a huntsman who took them hunting in the winter. And then, I think in 1900, they refurbished it. They 4
built the kitchen. It was an old house, so it didn't have any kitchen.
EE: Right, it would have been outside in another building.
EW: And so they built the kitchen wing on in 1900. And after that the men came down with the children and left the women and the children down here in the summer. And each family had one month.
EE: So that was the way it was until you went off to school?
EW: Well, the Depression. In the Depression they lost it. My uncle, my daddy's brother, had a job with a steamship company, and he bought it to keep it from going out of the family. He bought it and then he gave it to one of his daughters. And I don't know why she couldn't keep it, I think she had a sorry husband, and she was about to lose it, and my sister—I was still in the Red Cross, my sister found out about it and asked me if I wanted to buy it. I did. So I bought it in 1952. Well, it was before that because I kept—I bought it, but I couldn't get it because she didn't want her husband to have any part of the property. She certainly didn't want him to have any of her cash. And so every time he got hooked up with a woman, he'd call her and say, "Have you divorced me yet? Well, don't divorce me because I don't want to marry this woman." [laughter]
EE: I think I've got some relatives like that. Having too much fun. [chuckling]
EW: I thought she would never get rid of him. [chuckling] Oh my.
EE: Well, let's see, how much older was your older sister than you?
EW: Four years.
EE: Four years? So she went off to NCCW in '28?
EW: She went to St. Mary's [College, in Raleigh]. See, we were affluent in 1928, or '25. She went two years at St. Mary's, and then she went the last two years to Woman's College, NCCW.
EE: So she did not want to voluntarily go to NCCW? That was just something that the Depression brought on that she had to do?
EW: Well, she probably would have gone there, because where else would she go after? She'd have to have gone somewhere.
EE: Oh, St. Mary's was just a two-year back then?
EW: Two years.
EE: Okay. Because I had talked with some other folks who were transfer students into—I 5
guess WC later on, and they said it was always tough on them being transfers. They didn't know anybody coming in. Socially it was hard.
EW: She felt that way, too.
EE: You went to high school, I guess, in New Bern. Did you like school?
EW: Yeah.
EE: What was your favorite subject in school, do you remember?
EW: Talking. [laughter]
EE: You're like my sister.
EW: I didn't have a favorite subject. I just couldn't stand math. I never have been able to do math, but I liked to read. I liked all the social studies, and that's what I taught.
EE: You sound like you, because of your mama's situation and your family's, you might have been predisposed to go to NCCW all along. Or were you? Did you think of anyplace else to go to school?
EW: I had never even thought about it, because when the time came to go they didn't know whether they could send me or not. They didn't have any money. Somebody, a friend of my mother's, gave her the money to send me the first year.
EE: It was very important to them that you did go to college?
EW: Yes.
EE: They didn't want their troubles to affect you in going to college.
EW: Well, they felt like they had been educated. My grandmother went to college, my mother's mother.
EE: Very unusual.
EW: Well, I think my father's mother was, too, because she taught school. So I think they felt very strongly about education.
EE: What did your dad do after the Depression wiped out the fertilizer business?
EW: He got a job with the state as an inspector for—We used to tease him because we called it the “Lord Privy Council.” He inspected all the new privies that were being built, septic tanks, and that sort of thing.6
EE: Let's see, you would have headed off for NCCW in '33?
EW: Thirty-three to thirty-seven.
EE: You stayed on campus when you were there? Which dorm, do you remember?
EW: Didn't have them yet. I stayed the first year in Mary Foust. The next year—
EE: That was a new dorm, I guess.
EW: Oh yes.
EE: What's the one right across? They built two of them together.
EW: New Guilford. I stayed there my junior year. Sophomore year I stayed in Cotton, and my junior year I stayed in New Guilford, and my senior year I stayed in Woman's [dormitory].
EE: What was your major when you were at NCCW?
EW: I majored in social studies and an English minor.
EE: Do you have any favorite professors or classes you remember?
EW: I always remember Miss Taylor, Katherine Taylor. I had her—I don't think I was much younger than she was when I had her in French. And they always teased me because she said to me, "You are innately lazy!" And I said, "No, I'm not, I was just born that way." [laughter] And they said, "She didn't do anything to you about being sassy because she knew you didn't know any better." [laughter]
EE: Just born that way. [chuckling]
EW: I liked her. She was the house mother in New Guilford the year I was in New Guilford. And the last time I saw her—The last time I went to Greensboro I stopped by there. She was dean of women, and I stopped in to see her. She said, "Come out here, I want to show you the ugliest building in the state. It’s our superlative." And we went out and [she] showed us that building, McIver. She said, "That's our superlative, and it is ugly!" [chuckling] I think New Bern competed on a couple, but—I enjoyed Woman's College.
EE: Had North Spencer already had the fire when you were there? They were awful worried about having cooking in the rooms and fires. Did you all have the same speech about don't cook in the rooms, that kind of thing?
EW: They were scared to death of Spencer for the whole time I was there, but I don't think anything happened till after I was gone.7
EE: What did you all do for a social life back then? It was a little different, the campus being all women.
EW: Didn't have any social life. Every now and then one of the societies, the Adelphian or—I can't think what the other one was. I was an Adelphian because my aunt was an Adelphian. And they'd have a party. Well, they had something maybe once a year. [chuckling]
EE: Not enough.
EW: Well, the boys didn't have any cars. They didn't have any money for buses.
EE: That's true. Well, yeah, you were—
EW: They had to be really struck to come up there.
EE: So you didn't have any that were really struck on you at the time?
EW: I didn't have any problems. No, I don't remember ever feeling the lack of parties or anything like that.
EE: You graduated in '37. Your degree was in social studies, or what was the degree in? Do you remember what it was?
EW: Oh, I've forgotten. I guess it was in social studies and a minor in English.
EE: What were you planning on doing with that? Were you going to come back to New Bern? Were you heading out to the world? What did you want to do?
EW: I had no plans at all. As far as I was concerned, I'd have been just as happy to stay home with Mother and Daddy. I loved my family.
EE: Did you get to see them much? You probably didn't get to see them too much.
EW: No, I wouldn't see them from September till—
EE: Christmas?
EW: If we were lucky we got home for Thanksgiving, otherwise at Christmas. I roomed with a girl from New Bern our freshman year, and we were up there when they had the '33 storm, which washed New Bern—all this area covered with water. And they had a big headline in the Greensboro Daily News: "Hurricane Does Million Dollars Damage, New Bern Completely Destroyed." [chuckling] And my roommate read that laughed. She said, "Poor old New Bern, it's at least worth more than one million dollars." [laughter]
EE: I guess one of those things when the newspaper tells you stuff, did you call your folks to 8
make sure they were still okay and everybody was all right?
EW: I think they called us to tell us they were all right because we couldn't have gotten through. Besides that, we didn't have any money.
EE: So you roomed with a woman from New Bern up there your first year. What did you do when you finished school? Did you come back to New Bern? Where'd you go?
EW: I came back. I came back to New Bern, and my daddy and my sister and I went on a boat trip with friends from—oh, down near Carolina Pines. If you pass there, when you pass there and you get to Carolina Pines, look on your right and you'll see Stately Pines. They lived down that road there.
EE: Okay, this was between New Bern and Morehead [City].
EW: Between New Bern and Morehead. It's probably about ten, twelve miles east of New Bern. A friend told me not too long ago who went through there, beautiful pine trees, which is why it was named Stately Pines. They went through there and clear-cut it. I mean they cut it right down to the ground. They're going to build a shopping center in there. And the folks that live down that road at Stately Pines named it "Stately Stumps." [laughter] Go a little farther down.
EE: I will. I remember seeing Carolina Pines coming down here.
EW: Well, Carolina Pines is a development, and Stately Stumps is also, but it's got a green state sign. You pass Carolina Pines, and then on your right you will see Stately Pines, and then Flanner’s Beach. If you pass Flanner’s Beach you've passed it.
EE: You came back and went on this—?
EW: We went on this trip from Stately Pines to around Cedar Island through Core Sound then around. This is the straight side here and my uncle was here, my daddy's brother, so we stopped there at the head of the road. I think we spent the night, visited with him, then we went on up through the inland waterway. And when I got home they told me I had a job, and I didn't want to leave them. [chuckling] I didn't want one.
EE: They had gotten one for you. [chuckling]
EW: That was in Madison.
EE: Madison, up north of Greensboro?
EW: Just north of Greensboro. I stayed there two years, and then I went to—
EE: What were you doing up there?9
EW: Teaching. Social studies and English. I've forgotten why I left Madison. I went to Sumner and stayed there, then I joined the Red Cross.
EE: Sumter in South Carolina, or what did you say?
EW: Sumner.
EE: Oh, Sumner, okay.
EW: On the way to Asheboro [North Carolina].
EE: And that was another teaching job?
EW: Teaching. It was a county school.
EE: So you were teaching in Madison till '39?
EW: Yes.
EE: Thirty-seven is when you left. So '37 to '39 you were in Madison. Then you went to Sumner. And when did you join the Red Cross?
EW: Right after that. In '43 I joined the [Red Cross]. I'm probably a little different from anybody you've had, because I joined the WAVES [Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service—Navy] and was accepted, the first class, and was all ready to go, had given up my job, packed up everything, got a letter from the navy saying that I wasn't to report in September, I was to report in January. Well, that was not very satisfactory when you didn't have any mother and father and your sister was gone and you had nowhere to live and no job. They had canceled the job. So I went to Washington where my sister was, and saw Miss [Harriet] Elliott to see if she could help me. And she took me over to see Miss—what's her name, who was head of the WAVES?
EE: McAfee was head of the WAVES.
EW: McAfee, Mildred McAfee. Then they sent me to the Navy Department to the Bureau of—See, I'm crippled, and I had passed everything and was sworn in. I was Apprentice Seaman Williams. [chuckling] That tickles me now. But they kicked me out. That was it.
EE: Now is it because of your legs, or what was it?
EW: Because of my leg.
EE: And the leg condition is something you've had your whole life?
EW: Oh yeah, I had it when I went. I had it through Greensboro. I had it when I was six, polio.10
EE: Polio. So that left you unable to use that one leg?
EW: I think they thought I wouldn't be pretty when marching. [chuckling] And I wouldn't have, but I don't think you did too much marching.
EE: So how did you get through with the school? This was all before. So you just had a brace on that one leg? Is that how you did it?
EW: No, I didn't have a brace. I wore an Ace bandage or I wore normal shoes. I just limped. Somebody told me later if I had gone and gotten another opinion from another doctor that they couldn't have thrown me out, but I—
EE: But you were probably early enough they wanted to have a certain look.
EW: I was in the first class.
EE: So you went in in—You were trying to get in in '42 then, that fall of '42.
EW: Yeah, I applied. I applied.
EE: How did you find out about it to be in the first class?
EW: I think it was word of mouth.
EE: Word of mouth? You think it was faster among Woman's College folks, or—?
EW: Well, it could be that I found out about it through that head, I don't know. She [Harriet Elliott] left and went up to play around with her politics, and she knew McAfee and all that bunch.
EE: Let's see, let me back in and fill in a little bit just on how you got from there. You were—
EW: I was at Sumner when I applied.
EE: When you applied, and you quit the job in '42 to apply.
EW: I didn't quit then, I quit in '43. Yes, it was in '42.
EE: Forty-two, something like the fall of forty-two. Were you trying to get in as an enlisted or as an officer, or how?
EW: I was going in as an officer.
EE: So you were going to be heading toward Smith [College, in Northampton, Massachusetts].11
EW: Smith, the first class. The first class at Smith. And they threw me out—
EE: And you went to see McAfee, and then they—
EW: And I'll never forget that old fat captain told me I had adjusted very well to civilian life, he suggested that I stay there. That's not at all what I thought about him, but I didn't say it. [laughter]
EE: Well, now tell me, it is not an everyday thing for a woman to want to join the military. So how did you get the idea to want to join the military?
EW: Well, I think that it's not everybody that has—females had the opportunity to join the military until World War II.
EE: That's right.
EW: Some did, some joined in World War I, but—
EE: I mean was it out of patriotism, or more money, or you knew some friends who were doing it, or—?
EW: I don't think I ever had money in mind. I think it was patriotism. Everybody, all the boys I knew, all the boys I grew up with were all in the service.
EE: How did your folks feel about you going?
EW: Well, my mother was dead.
EE: That's right, she died your second year in school.
EW: She died the year I got out. She died in—
EE: In '38, you said.
EW: In '38. I graduated in '37, so I had about four months before she got sick. And that was ironic. She had pneumonia, and they developed penicillin that summer. But anyway I was just as glad, as it turned out, because I certainly got around the world.
EE: Right. Well, tell me then, this was in forty—When did you go to D.C.? Was it in the fall of '42?
EW: My sister and her husband were living in D.C. So when I started to try to do something about being reinstated in the navy, I went up and stayed with them. He was in the navy.
EE: What was your sister's name?12
EW: Amy, Amy Guion [pronounced “Guy-on”]. She used to say she was called everything from “Jones” to “Onion.” [chuckling]
EE: Okay. So they were in D.C., and they let you stay with them?
EW: I stayed with them. And I was in D.C., I guess, for the Red Cross from probably March until June.
EE: March of '43 till June of '43? You joined the Red Cross that March then?
EW: I joined before that, but I was in training. I did the "clubmobile," and I was so ignorant I went home and I said, "Well, they're going to send me to a club in Mobile, Alabama." And of course it was a form of their service to the [U.S.] Armed Forces, and I was sent to North Africa instead of Alabama. [chuckling]
EE: So when you joined, you thought you were staying in the States.
EW: I thought I was—
EE: Did they say anything about going overseas?
EW: I knew I was going overseas.
EE: Now wait a second, they wouldn't let WAVES go overseas, and you weren't good enough for the WAVES, and yet they sent you to North Africa in the Red Cross.
EW: Yeah, I went all around the world before I got through with that.
EE: Well, we're going to get around the world. Let me get you there. I want to make sure we're going through and getting details.
EW: No, the WAVES, I couldn't march.
EE: Well, I know they liked to drill at Smith. I've heard more stories about drilling in the morning and drilling in the afternoon. That was the farthest you'd been away from home, I guess, going up—Of course your sister was there, so it really wasn't like going too far away. You had somebody to talk to up there.
EW: And I had nobody. I had an aunt, an uncle, and cousins, but I had nobody the first class right off in September. My sister was gone, Daddy was dead, Mother was dead.
EE: You joined the Red Cross in Washington. Whose idea was it to forget about the navy and join the Red Cross?
EW: I was out of the navy.13
EE: So you just on your own said, "Well, let me try the Red Cross"? Did you think about any of the other services?
EW: Well, I had two friends who were in England. One was a man. He was a field director from New Bern, a good family friend, and he told me, "Try to get in, and I'll see if I can get you to England." And the girl was in social services, and she was in a big hospital in London. I went to school with her, grew up with her, went to church with her.
EE: What was her name?
EW: Eleanor Nunn, as in Catholic [nun] with two Ns.
EE: Right, right. So you joined, and what did you call it? "Clubmobile," was it?
EW: "Clubmobile." Where I was it was just a little panel truck, and they put coffee and doughnuts and cream and sugar in the back of it and you went around and greeted—took coffee and doughnuts to serve [soldiers]. It was mostly for missions.
EE: Where did you train? What kind of training did you have for the Red Cross?
EW: I don't remember anything about it, being in training. We went to classes.
EE: And you did it right there in D.C."
EW: Yeah.
EE: And then were did you first get sent after there?
EW: I got sent to Bayside in Maryland.
EE: This was after June of '43?
EW: Bayview.
EE: Bayview. This should have been June of '43.
EW: It was a Merchant Marine group, where they took care of them. And then I was sent to New York, Midston House, and I was there when they sent me to the most awful camp I've ever—there's no excuse for it—Camp Patrick Henry, outside of Portsmouth and Norfolk [Virginia], in that area.
EE: And at all these places you were doing the same thing with this—?
EW: We were just riding around with volunteers. And I remember setting fire to one poor Brooklyn woman's suit, a Red Cross uniform. I threw my cigarette out the window and it 14
came back and landed—[chuckling]
EE: Wreaking havoc. [chuckling]
EW: I tell you, don't smoke. [chuckling] I have never been more embarrassed. Oh, it was awful.
EE: Tell me about the role of the Red Cross. Now, because it's so much more people, more organization—I think most folks are familiar with it in the emergency context. In a wartime situation, of course, that was more involved. How was your structure? Did you have sort of like a commanding officer structure, like a military structure?
EW: Let's see, when I went to North Africa, headquarters was in Algiers, and I went to Casablanca [Morocco]. They sent me from there to Rabat [Morocco], and I worked out of a club in Rabat with men who had just come out of Kasserine Pass [Tunisia] and all through that North African Campaign.
EE: All right, let me get to North Africa with you. You were in Bayview. How long were you in Bayview?
EW: Oh, about two or three weeks.
EE: Two or three weeks? Then in New York for—Where were you in New York?
EW: Midston House.
EE: Pittston House?
EW: Midston. I've got something wrong with my ears. It comes and goes.
EE: That's okay. Midston, was that in New York, too?
EW: I've forgotten where it is. It's in downtown New York. It's respectable. [chuckling]
EE: It was respectable. Camp Patrick Henry you could have left off the face of the earth.
EW: Camp Patrick Henry—
EE: Patrick Henry, and that was in Portsmouth [Virginia].
EW: The army, whoever was in command of that place, should have been court-martialed for the treatment he gave the Red Cross. Listen, I'm not kidding. It was so awful that the boys told us when we got on the ship that they cried over us marching five miles. They'd pass us in trucks, being carried, and we had our pocketbooks, which—Have you ever seen a woman's pocketbook? Musette bag, and a suitcase, and a gas mask, and some of the girls had portable typewriters we had to carry for the army. And we had to march—We didn't 15
have to march, but we had to walk two miles to get a beer at the officer's club. And we got up there and were told that the commanding officer had said not to serve us more than one beer. So I've never forgotten that man [at the officer's club]. His name was Lanny Ross, and he was a UFO—a USO [United Service Organizations]—[chuckling]
EE: He [the commanding officer] may have been a UFO [unidentified flying object] too, really. [chuckling] It sounds like he was inhuman.
EW: Yeah, he [Lanny Ross] was a tenor, and he heard about it and he said it's the most awful thing he'd ever heard of, and if any Red Cross came up there and asked for a beer, or anything else, let them have it and put it on his bill, so there was no question. The army couldn't question, the bar couldn't question—
EE: Did you live on the base, on the camp?
EW: Yeah.
EE: And were you all rooming with other—just Red Cross people, or all different?
EW: Just Red Cross, about eighty of us. And we came down from Washington on a train, no air conditioning. But we came down. Of course, we had no air conditioning and the trains were powered with coal. We were streaked—And we were met—This was the beginning of our ordeal. We were met with trucks they carried cattle in, and they had not been cleaned out.
EE: Oh, come on!
EW: I'm not kidding.
EE: And you all had to get up in that?
EW: We had to get up and stand up there I don't know how long. And they drove us up to our barracks, and I think the barracks held sixty.
EE: This is how they treated folks who were coming to help?
EW: So in these places was just a long line of cots, and out on the back side we went into the head. And none of us had ever been in a man's latrine. And to walk in there and to see all those toilets with no seats, and all the heads, and eighteen to a shower, with people who—[chuckling]
EE: And no privacy whatsoever.
EW: Nothing.
EE: And up till then your accommodations, I guess, had been more dormitory-like almost, 16
hadn't they?
EW: It really was appalling.
EE: And then you had not been given any advance warning as to what this would be like?
EW: No, I don't think the Red Cross really knew about it. I don't know why they didn't.
EE: Well, it sounds like you were the first group assigned there or something?
EW: No.
EE: And this would have been in the summer of '43?
EW: The summer of '43. The middle of summer of '43.
EE: Right in the heat of the summer, yeah.
EW: Yes! We went aboard ship and we were at sea on Bastille Day [July 14].
EE: So that's where you came to be sent out to North Africa. So you were only at that camp for just a few weeks?
EW: Two weeks. I couldn't have stood it any longer. [chuckling]
EE: Two of the worst weeks in your life, it sounds like.
EW: I think I'd have been down and murdered the commanding general.
EE: Well, now you had access to the officers’ club even though you weren't military.
EW: We could go in and stand at the bar. I don't even know that they would have served us a glass of water. We could walk in and walk out, and that was it.
EE: When you came to that camp, did you know then you were going to North Africa? You were just waiting for orders?
EW: I didn't know where I was going. When we first got to the ship, after our five-mile walk, one of the girls said, "I think that's the Mariposa." She said, "That ship, if I'm correct, went from San Francisco to Australia, and I went on it with my mother twice." And we got aboard ship, and it was the Mariposa. The same purser was aboard and he remembered Mimi, and he said, "Certain hours of the day I'm not in my quarters, take your friends and go in there and take a freshwater bath and get yourselves cleaned up and then go sit down on my deck."
EE: Oh, that was great.17
EW: That was the first nice thing that happened to us. [chuckling]
EE: So what they'd done is they had commandeered a passenger ship for purposes of transporting you all.
EW: Right.
EE: Now were they transporting troops plus Red Cross?
EW: Oh yeah, there were troops. See, the people that we had been passed by were—The men that were on the ship watching us come aboard were the ones that said that some of them had cried because they felt so sorry for us.
EE: Knowing what was coming ahead for you all?
EW: No, just what we were going through.
EE: Just what you were going through, yeah. I've heard some other folks talking about being on ships that were passenger ships that were re-outfitted and they'd take a room that was designed for two and put ten. How many were in your—
EW: We had eighteen. See, I went several times. Eighteen in the Mariposa.
EE: You had eighteen in a room that was built for—?
EW: And one bathroom, and that was saltwater.
EE: And originally these were cabins designed for how many folks?
EW: A pair, a couple.
EE: So they just basically hung hammocks all throughout the thing?
EW: They made bunks. Because I remember I slept this way and Molly Wheeler slept that way, so her toe was right up—[laughter]
EE: I take it you got to know everybody very well then.
EW: Yeah, we got to know them. [chuckling]
EE: You mentioned the woman's name was Mimi who had been on this thing before?
EW: Who was that?
EE: Mimi was the name of the woman?18
EW: Mimi had been on the Mariposa as a passenger on a beautiful South Pacific cruise, not on the transport. See, the Mariposa was a transport when I was on it. When Mimi was on it, it was a cruise ship with two people, Mimi and her mother.
EE: In that room that you had eighteen in. Now, you don't know when you're getting on the ship where you're headed?
EW: [No.]
EE: I assume you're going in some sort of flotilla, because there's still submarine traffic out there, isn't there?
EW: We went over—just zigzagged. We didn't go—
EE: You didn't have any kind of an escort?
EW: No. And when we got to Casablanca, after we were put in our staging area, they brought in a shipload of nurses who had been on a boat that was sunk. That was my first experience with people being victims of the war. I don't know whether there were any killed or not.
EE: But their boat was sunk?
EW: But they were all—they were army nurses. And as far as I know, the Red Cross and the nurses were the only ones that really went overseas.
EE: I thought that too, and I interviewed an army dietitian who ended up being in a Naples [Italy] army hospital and was bombed. So it was the medical people who basically—
EW: Well, I had been in a hospital in Tientsin, China [now Tianjin, China], and they put me in a French hospital operated by nuns, and I asked them why they did that to me, because they couldn't speak English, I couldn't speak French, and they had the worst—They had darning needles for hypodermics. [chuckling] They'd have to stick these nice little needles in, and when it would come out, you'd come out with it. And I did get them some new needles.
EE: I'm sure many people thank you for that.
EW: I told the doctor, "Get these people some needles!" [chuckling] It's awful what they had to go through. But they said they couldn't put me in the daily hospital in Tientsin because they didn't have any nurses. They had nurses in Shanghai but they didn't have them in Tientsin.
EE: All right, well, let me get you out of North Africa. You're in North Africa, and you arrive I guess, in what, August of 1943?19
EW: August.
EE: And you're not driving a "clubmobile."
EW: I didn't do anything. I was in a club north of Casablanca and south of Rabat. I'll see if I can drag that up. About fifteen miles—
EE: This would have been a club run—This was sort of like a club where folks would come to relax after being on the front line?
EW: It was for the First Armored Division to—The men who'd been in the Kasserine Pass and all the North African things, fighting [German Field Erwin Marshal] Rommel, is where they would come to go in the ocean. And nobody could go in it because it was so damn cold. [laughter]
EE: It's a great view, but nobody bother sticking your foot in the water. [chuckling]
EW: I stuck mine in and I said, "I've had my one bout with cold, cold water, and I'm not going above the knee."
EE: That's the thing with California, the beaches are so beautiful-looking. If you put your foot in there, it's freezing to death.
EW: Oh, this had cold currents, Canary Currents and things going up. But that place the GIs took me down, it looked over the Atlantic Ocean. It was a beautiful spot! They had GIs there who were responsible for running the club, and we were there to give the coffee and doughnuts and any comfort articles and so forth. They took me out and said, "Now here has got nothing between us and the United States. Have you ever shot a pistol?" I said, "Yes, my daddy taught me how to shoot guns when I was growing up." And they said, "Well here, try this. This is an automatic weapon, and you just put it up and fire it like you would a .22." I put it up and fired it like a .22, and they switched something on it—[laughter] Absolutely no warning!
EE: And people scattered? [chuckling] Were you shooting out over the water?
EW: I started out shooting out over the water. [chuckling] They grabbed me and—
EE: I can imagine the kick on that thing if you're not prepared for it.
EW: I wasn't prepared. But I stayed there for a while, and the1st Armored Division asked for us to go with them. But I'm glad we didn't go. [chuckling] And then they sent me to Algiers, and that's where Red Cross headquarters was for the Twelfth Air Force. That's where [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower was at that time.
EE: Who was in the 1st Armored? Was that [General George] Patton? No, that wouldn't be 20
the 1st Armored. What was he?
EW: The 1st Armored Division was there, and it had been through the—
EE: Who was head of the1st Armored Division, do you remember?
EW: Major Foster. [chuckling] I remember Major Foster. He was from North Dakota, the nicest guy he could be. I never saw him after they pulled out for Sicily. It wasn't Patton.
EE: And then you were in Algiers, that was the Red Cross headquarters, and you say Eisenhower was there, based there too?
EW: At Algiers. By the time I got there he was being sent to England, and things became—
EE: You went to Algiers. Now tell me where did you spend Christmas '43? Were you in Rabat or were you at—
EW: I spent it in what the men called "Manuria," Manduria [Italy]. They called it "Manuria."
EE: That's in Morocco?
EW: That's in Italy. I went from Algiers to Hamamet [Tunisia], which is probably one of the most beautiful beaches. It was on the Gulf of Hamamet, and it was a lovely little Arab town.
EE: This was in Algeria?
EW: No, that was in Tunisia. I was jumping around, but after all—
EE: Well, tell me, how did you get these changes of assignments? The word wouldn't come down from Washington, would it? Who gave you this—?
EW: It would come to headquarters, because I remember I told the Stevensons, Bill and Bumpy Stevenson were the head of the Red Cross in Algiers—
[End Tape 1, Side A—Begin Tape 1, Side B]
EW: So I was sent to Hamamet, which was on Cape Bon, and they had just evacuated it from Rommel's people. And I was on Cape Bon and somebody said, "Hey, would you like to go to—" Where is it they were that the Romans got the salt? Anyway it was—
EE: Carthage?
EW: Carthage. They said, "Would you like to go to Carthage?" I said, "Yes! I certainly would 21
like to go to Carthage." So I went to Carthage. And I wore a pith helmet, which was the last time I ever wore a pith helmet. About two weeks later they came and said, "Come on, we've got the pictures of Carthage." We were going through the pictures of Carthage and they said, "Who's that old ruin?" [laughter] It was me in the pith helmet. So that went in the waste.
EE: It sounds like you were there in Morocco for a couple of months and then moved to Algeria probably in October or November, and then a couple months later you end up in—
EW: Hamamet.
EE: Hamamet, Tunisia, which is—
EW: It was probably weeks rather than months, because I think it was October that I went to Italy, and that's when—I had some young cousins in Durham [North Carolina], and their mother told them that they had a cousin who had flown the Mediterranean in a jeep. [chuckling] And they were dying to meet me. I was practically an old woman going on a cane before they met me, but I did fly the Mediterranean in a jeep because it was the only place to sit. [chuckling]
EE: So you were in the back of one of these transport planes and you were sitting in a jeep?
EW: It was a transport, and I was responsible for all of the—They didn't tell me where I was going. They just told me to be at the airport at ten o'clock and that I was responsible for everything aboard the plane.
EE: So you were shipping out a whole bunch of supplies from North Africa?
EW: I had all of the social services officer's goods, including his jeep. And those two good-for-nothing lieutenants wanted to get rid of me when we got to the airport because they wanted to fly back to Algiers with the jeep. But we were over Sicily, getting ready to go over Italy, when I said—
EE: I was going to say, was that hostile territory?
EW: Yes. I said, "What are those little puffballs out there?" They said, "Oh, my god, we forgot to answer the password. That's flak!" [chuckling]
EE: So you're being shot at.
EW: They said, "Where are we going?" I said, "I don't know where we're going. You're flying the plane." I wasn't told. And so we got to Rottaglia and landed.
EE: And is this in Italy?22
EW: This is Italy. This is like that.
EE: Right over the corner of Naples. You're right there—
EW: We were right over the Gulf of Taranto. But I don't know how they got there. They must have picked up somebody who told them, because I didn't know. They kept trying to get rid of me and I said, "I'm not getting off here till I get this jeep off, because I'm going to be in the jeep. I'm not going to be left here."
EE: No, you're not going to stand there. You're going to—
EW: Nothing. So I said, "There's a sergeant from the 47th Bomber Wing, right now get him." They had it on the jeep, his jeep. So they got it. And I went up to what was [headquarters]. The place was blown all to bits. It was an Italian air base and they had blown it all to pieces when they were coming in. And I saw this major and I asked if he was in charge. I said, "Where is the restroom?" He said, "Look around."
EE: Anywhere you want to make it. [chuckling]
EW: Anywhere you—I said, "I can't—" He said, "Well, you are not equipped like we are, so we can stand right up against a building. But this is it." I said, "Well, tell me how to get to the headquarters and I'll take this jeep and go."
He said, "No, you won't."
I said, "Why not?"
He said, "Because they haven't un-mined the roads." So I went all day long with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and no bathroom. And Jack Mill came in. He was the wing messenger, and he said, "I'll take you. I'll take you to headquarters, but I've got to go to Foggia [Italy] first." So we flew up to Foggia, which is a hundred miles north of where we were supposed to be, which meant two hundred miles. We got back finally at dark. We landed in Manduria, and I had—
EE: This was your Christmas experience?
EW: Yes, I'm getting up on Christmas. I haven't even gotten unpacked. [chuckling] We got out and got in the jeep. There were no lights on the thing, no nothing. I mean it didn't even light up when we landed. We landed about dusk. No restroom, no nothing. And I got to the quarters, they took me down to where my roommate was. I said, "Where is the restroom?"
"Restroom, hell! There's not even any water."
I said, "Well, would you please help me get my bedroll open? I've got a can of tomato juice in there, and that's going to be poured out the window." That was my first—all day long.
EE: It sounds like this was the first time, though, that you really were in the combat area.
EW: I was, yeah.23
EE: You had been behind the scenes, getting ready to come over—
EW: I had been where they had been.
EE: You had been where they had been, but after it was safe and secure. Now you're right there, right as it's coming in.
EW: It really was. They dug a trench right outside our window. And it's the only building I ever saw—You see, it ran parallel to the creek bank there, and it must have been a football field long, and there was only one door. That was in the middle. Not anything on the other side, just one right in the middle. So, in order to go to the bathroom, after I got there and used my tin, you had to walk half the length—we were almost the whole length of the building—half the length of the building to go out, walk back this way, that way, that way, and there was the tent. So I built steps outside our window. [laughter]
EE: Just forget that! [chuckling]
EW: And you'd get in the tent—it was a parabola tent—get in the tent, and grab the post and hold yourself over the slit trench. Shall we say primitive conditions? [chuckling]
EE: I was going to say. Now I imagine having a tent was their accommodation for being female, because I doubt if the men had that.
EW: They didn't have a tent. No, they either had to go out the window or jump out and go against the side of the—[chuckling]
EE: The tent was for the women, a little privacy for them, that was it.
EW: Right. And everybody stuck his head out the window to brush his teeth, and we'd wave to each other just brushing your teeth, and so you had to have—They said the Germans had damaged the water mains, and they didn't have—
EE: So they were sabotaging it on the way as they were retreating? Is that what they were trying to do?
EW: They tore down the aqueducts is what they did. They took all the flour and all the food. We couldn't go to a restaurant without going to the commissary first and getting food, to take it and have them prepare our food.
EE: Because they didn't have any or because—
EW: They didn't have any.
EE: And this was the environment in which you lived, in what you called "Manuria," in 24
Christmas of '43?
EW: I was at Manduria till April of '45.
EE: So that was basically where you camped out for a while, till almost the end of the war—
EW: It was during the war that I went home to be with my sister when her baby was due. She had so many people there to help her have the baby that there was hardly room for me. And when I went home, President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt died the morning I got home. And Ed was born on the day after VE [Victory in Europe] Day.
EE: A pretty event-filled month, it sounds like, for your family. All right, well, that gets me there. Let me do a little back and fill, because you've taken me to some new places and I want to make sure that the folks listening to this—Just for somebody listening, you get your orders and then you go down from your local commander, whether it's this Bill and Bumpy Stevenson in Algiers who tell you to go—
EW: They're the only ones in the Red Cross I ever really knew, Bill and Bumpy.
EE: Okay. Tell me how assignments were made. Was it you and your group/company of women, or just everybody had an individual assignment and you were assigned individually?
EW: I think it was individual. I had a couple of friends who went together, but they were told they were going with the troop carriers. I didn't know where I was going. They just left me.
EE: It sounds like they used Red Cross personnel just almost like you'd use—kind of like a caulking gun. You'd patch and fill. Wherever you needed somebody, you'd put a Red Cross person.
EW: Yes, that's right.
EE: We need somebody to support staff, we need somebody for the nurses, we need somebody to help in whatever you needed to, and so you really weren't under a hierarchical structure with a commander and had to do as a group, but you were just assigned.
EW: The Red Cross paid my salary when I was in Italy because the wing would not let them pay my room and board or anything like that. They said I belonged to them and to hell with the Red Cross. [chuckling] They paid my salary, that's it. But if I had orders to go anywhere, it was the army. See, it was the Army Air Corps.
EE: So your assignments were almost exclusively—Well, your first one was in Rabat. You were helping out with the Armored Division. But then after that—25
EW: That was a club. I was under [Club Director] Frank Cleverlee in Rabat.
EE: So he was a—?
EW: He was director of the club, and he also directed the people in the vicinity.
EE: In Rabat did you all live in an apartment or at the club?
EW: I stayed at the Beach Club. They had quarters there.
EE: And you just described in wonderful detail the quarters in Manduria. [chuckling]
EW: Well, that was—Manduria, they told me when we went through it one time, "Guess how many people live here." I said, "I can't begin to believe." They said sixty thousand people. It wasn't much bigger than Gloucester when you went through it. They'd pack everybody in one little building. You couldn't believe that there were sixty thousand.
EE: Was it like Quonset huts, or what kid of material?
EW: No, they were houses. It was a regular—
EE: And they just built it all up from the ground when they got there?
EW: It was there. And it was so filthy, the Manduria base, Italian. When I went in the doughnut place, the man that operated the doughnut place would pick up a mosquito net and come over and put it over me and surround me. Flies!
EE: That bad?
EW: If you see a picture of anybody in the Mediterranean area that's not rich, they'll have flies crawling on them because of the way that—They don't have good—
EE: Sanitation?
EW: Sanitation. And we'd been there two weeks, the GIs had got it cleaned up and it was not bad, no worse than here. But it was awful.
EE: You had a very busy first year in the Red Cross, it sounds like, getting from—I mean, I'm just trying to imagine the changes in your life, you coming from North Carolina and you go up to the big city with your sister.
EW: I went to Woman's College. [chuckling]
EE: Well, I'm just saying just in that one year from '42 to '43. Now you either have to be carrying an atlas with you or you had to be pretty good with geography, don't you?26
EW: I'm good with geography.
EE: Well, I'm impressed. And I guess this is the thing is that everybody is so mobile. I mean, I've heard so many things. This is when America really discovers the world, because you have to, you're going all these new places and—
EW: I said to somebody one day, this was in North Africa, I said, "Gee, the Arabs must have been awfully glad to see the Americans." They said, "What are you talking about? They're the perfect neutral. They hate everybody." [laughter]
EE: That's true. Well, was Morocco French then?
EW: Yeah.
EE: They were all French, I guess—Morocco, Algeria, all French.
EW: It's just after Vietnam that they lost their heads. They should have kept control of them. [chuckling]
EE: I'm just wondering, do you ever look back at Casablanca, the movie, and think, "Well, that's not really what it was""
EW: That's when I first saw it was when I was in Italy, saw Casablanca. And I had just been to Casablanca. Well, I was going to state about the sorry scene on this road in North Africa. It didn't make any difference whether it was in Algeria or Spanish Morocco or French Morocco, Oran or what, you'd see this pile of twigs, this pile as big as this room walking down the road, with four little legs sticking out, and a male walking behind it and female walking in front of it. And the GIs called them the A-rabs and the B-rabs. The A-rab was the woman. She was walking in front, so if there was a mine she'd blow up before the donkey did.
EE: Oh, gosh!
EW: The donkey was covered with twigs that they were taking home for her to cook, and the man was walking behind the donkey. He probably had on a barracks bag which he'd cut holes in for his feet, and it might have “Ellis” or “Jackowski” or something on it.
EE: So you’d pick up on this—
EW: Well, they did, they called them A-rabs and B-rabs, and you'd see it. You couldn't believe it.
EE: You're thrown together in this war, so many different people who have had no contact. Everybody is winging it, aren't they?
EW: Yeah.27
EE: Just you know you've got something to do.
EW: Well, one thing they had in common, every place I ever went that had a ship pull into port, they struck up the band and [played] "Roll Out the Barrel." That's one thing they had in common. It didn't make any difference where you went, it was "Roll Out the Barrel."
EE: [hums tune] [laughter] This Manduria base, is it there on the coast in Italy or is it back inland a little bit?
EW: About five miles from the Gulf of Taranto.
EE: I'm just trying to imagine in the boot shape of Italy, is it down on the toe or is it closer to Naples?
EW: This is on the heel.
EE: It's on the heel, back on the back side.
EW: Yes, it's on the inside of the heel. You go across to the Adriatic. By Brindisi. Do you know where Brindisi is?
EE: Yes, it's just right there. Brindisi is at the top of the heel.
EW: It's twenty miles southwest of Brindisi.
EE: Okay. You're there, and your job at that camp—You said you were going back doing some of the—You were there to set up a club like you had set up—
EW: We didn't set up a club. We met the missions that flew over the Alps and over to Ploesti [Romania], the first of the B-24s that we had. They were B-25s, then they changed them to B-24s. They were the ones that did the low-level raid on Ploesti in Romania.
EE: And this would have been in '44?
EW: They told me, although they didn't get the credit for it, that they had to advertise the fact that they were going on a mission for half an hour because they had to circle over our field to gain altitude to get over the Albanian and Montenegran Alps to go to Ploesti and those fields so the ack-ack [anti-aircraft artillery] placed just east was ready for them when they came over.
EE: Your job then was to meet those? And so people would be coming into the area and they would be at your base. They would be flying in from other places, and that would be the takeoff point for these raids?
EW: Well, I was on the field—We were just off the field at Manduria, and it was the home of 28
the 349th Bomber Wing, bomb group—they had four groups—and we were supposed to be there—When they flew on a mission, we were supposed to be there with coffee and doughnuts when they landed. And the general, they had a new general, and he decided—That was when southern France was coming off. We didn't know it, but we knew there was a big thing coming. And he wouldn't let them tell us anything, so we didn't meet the mission when it came back from southern France. And the men, friends that were in the general's office said that he was beside himself because the switchboard was all lit up, and the commanding officers of every group were on there raising hell because there hadn't been any Red Cross. Well, we didn't know it. We didn't have any doughnuts, we didn't have anything. He never did that again. We had nothing to do with it. He just wouldn't let it be. Because we had access to everything. They knew who we were, we were part of them, we ate breakfast with them, lunch with them, dinner with them sometimes, so we thought of them—But southern France really got him.
EE: And this was when the Vichy government, I guess, was collapsing?
EW: Yeah. I had a friend—
EE: It sounds like you were—it's almost like it's the base for a three-front campaign, if you're talking about France, Italy, and then the Balkans.
EW: When it was D-Day.
EE: But you were coming in right there. So that was your base just before—
EW: This was a diversion for D-Day, to try to pull troops down.
EE: So you were attacking southern France as the diversion, so that—Okay.
EW: Right out of Italy. And I had three friends who were in the navy, and one of them is a first cousin, and I knew he was on a 505 LST [Landing Ship-Tank]. So he wrote me and said his mother said it was a good thing that he got on an LST because he had a yeoman to write for him, because nobody would be able to read it otherwise. [chuckling] Evidently his yeoman wrote me that he'd be in Naples around his birthday. He could say Naples because he was at sea and they didn't know when his birthday was. So I started out to find him. I got word that I had another friend who was in Brindisi. He was on one of those like President John F. Kennedy—ran across from Manfredonia [Italy] over to rescue the flyers that were shot down. And another one was on the Augusta, which was the flagship of the fleet.
So I went out for dinner with a whole bunch of them, took us out to Taranto, and we went to aboard and met Commodore Ziroli. And I told him I had three people I had grown up with, one was a relative, one was my best friend, could he tell me where they were. And he snapped his finger and here came an orderly. In a few minutes he came in, Tom was in Brindisi, “Ecky” was in Naples, and Stanley was in Sicily. And they told me when the Augusta would be in Naples and told me where Tom was in Brindisi. [chuckling] And I went over there, and he came up from below and he said, "My god, 29
how did you find me? I didn't even know where I was myself." [laughter] I said, "You have to know the commodore."
EE: Really.
EW: But I did, I got to see them all.
EE: That's wonderful. I know folks when they were doing letters back and forth every letter was—
EW: V-mail.
EE: V-mail, and it was all censored. You couldn't mention places and stuff. Did you write letters back to—Was your dad still living? When did he pass away?
EW: In '41. He was like your daddy, he was building up things to make oil right out of automobiles that were making fog and all sorts of stuff.
EE: Right. But you were writing back to your sister?
EW: Yes.
EE: So you were able to get letters out then?
EW: I didn't have any trouble with the V-mail. I have—I think it's a funny story. The girl that tried to get me to go to England, that really was responsible for getting me in Red Cross, her mother had never seen V-mail, and she was noted for not being widely read or anything like that. And so she got a letter, a V-mail from Eleanor, and she looked at this little thing and then she said, "Where in the world did Eleanor get a tiny little typewriter like that?" [laughter]
EE: Yeah, some folks are a little slower than others, I think.
EW: Well, I came home from Italy when Franklin Roosevelt died, and then when my nephew was born, and then I went to China.
EE: Did you get special dispensation to come home because your sister was pregnant?
EW: Because she was having the baby.
EE: And you said that she needed your help?
EW: Right. I don't know, I never have understood it, because my aunt was there with her son, and she had a good friend of ours, hers and mine, who was there with her two children. I couldn't see where I was needed, but I was needed, so I went home.30
EE: Were you anxious to get home?
EW: No, I really was not. I didn't object, but I wasn't anxious.
EE: I guess after the first couple months when you arrived there you weren't really in danger. The place was secure.
EW: Oh no.
EE: You didn't have any worry about them losing—falling back in positions? You were in a secure area.
EW: You didn't have it with the air force like you had it with the ground forces. For one year they swapped. They had so much flak from the ground forces that the air force had it easy, and the air force [thought] the ground forces had it easy except the trenches, and so they swapped. They sent a whole bunch of officers and put them in this plane and closed them in and took them up to twenty thousand feet, froze them to death. They said, "Get us out of here. We'll not say another word about trenchfoot or anything else, but get me out of this mess." And the same thing with the air force. They couldn't stand the trenches. They couldn't stand that, so—
EE: So everybody got used to their own stuff. Day-to-day, it sounded like you were in a position where somebody was looking forward to seeing you every day. Because if they came back from a run, that means they got home safe.
EW: I can tell you a story on that. They put through while I was with the Red Cross in Italy a thing that said you [returning pilots] could just have a drink rather than anything else from a clubmobile. So I was told, "You won't be here very long." I said, "Why won't I?" They said, "Because they're not going to give up the possibility of a drink for a cup of coffee." And I said something to one of the men, and in fact he said, "Are you crazy? When we come out over the head of the Adriatic Sea, we can see the red cross on that clubmobile sitting in our field and we know somebody is waiting for us. There's no way we're going to let them trade you for an ounce of whiskey." Then they saved it up and had a party. [laughter]
EE: So they kept the ration and they—
EW: Well, when they got a quart, because in those days they had a quart, when they got a quart they had a party.
EE: That's wonderful.
EW: But they said they absolutely, "No sir, we could see—" I didn't realize you could see that far! That's all the way up to Switzerland, and that was all the way down to the foot of Italy.31
EE: That's right. Well, in your position, and it was different from others, it sounds like there wasn't any problem with the way women as such were treated.
EW: No.
EE: You were treated with respect, you weren't—Some of the folks, you know, have had experiences where they didn't quite think they were treated with respect, especially the WAVES. You know, the drill instructors would kind of giggle or made a little light of the fact, "Okay, sure, let's try it again, ladies." But you were taken seriously in what you did and valued for what you did, you felt?
EW: I don't remember ever feeling anything but friends.
EE: You worked at Manduria with the same group of men and women the whole time you were there?
EW: Well, actually, I only worked with one full-time. She left and then I got two more, but for the most part just the same. I was the only Red Cross girl on the field.
EE: Now your job was to prepare the coffee and the doughnuts, as well as to serve them? And you had to do this—How many flyers would you service in a day?
EW: It could be three hundred, it could be just one company. If they didn't have a mission, we'd go to the mess halls and just hang out.
EE: What was your work week? Was it six days a week? Did you get a day off?
EW: Seven days a week.
EE: Seven days a week?
EW: I had so much leave when I came home to my sister because I'd never taken any.
EE: Right. Seven days a week, and you were working daytime, nighttime?
EW: Mostly daytimes. If they had a party, if the enlisted men had a party, we were invited. And we were asked to come at a certain time, and at a certain time the first sergeant came to us and said, "It's time for you to go home now." [chuckling] They'd get so much to drink and they'd have the Italian girls, so they'd send us home so we wouldn't, we wouldn’t—
EE: Okay. Was there a lot of socializing between the enlisted folks and you all?
EW: Yes. That's funny, too, because they'd say, "Are you going to the dance tonight?"
"No."
"Why aren't you going?" 32
"Nobody asked me." They've got three hundred, you know. Nobody wanted to be turned down, so they wouldn't ask you.
EE: [chuckling] The male ego is a tough thing, isn't it?
EW: It was just ridiculous. So finally it just came down to Rick Carter, a real nice guy. He was married and had children, I knew it and he knew it, I guess his wife knew it. He would take me because they needed the women.
EE: Right. So just somebody had to have the courage to get you there. You'd dance with any and everybody once you got there.
EW: And I'd just as soon go with him as anybody around. But we had a problem, too, with the Red Cross. We were accused of selling the Red Cross articles. And I can tell you an experience I had in Italy. I got a message from the sergeant in charge of the recreation, and he said that he had gotten his supply of cigarettes for the month, and that every single one of them was a Red Cross cigarette, that it was not for sale by the [U.S.] Armed Forces, but he would be forced to sell it if I couldn't do something about it. Because that was his share; that's all he was going to get.
So I got the wing to fly me up to Naples and told them the situation, and they sent the equivalent of the Armed Services cigarettes. We took the rest and kept them. But that's what happened. I asked that sergeant. I said, "Why is that we are always accused of selling Red Cross supplies when we don't?" He said, "Well, for one thing, it's the Red Cross." He said, "You see that great big red cross you know it's comfort. It's raisins, it's shaving lotion, it's chewing gum, it's candy, it's food, it's cigarettes. And when they see it they go and steal it." Now that's what would have happened if I hadn't been friends with the sergeant. He made the effort to—
EE: Did you have a rank within the Red Cross? Did they give ranks?
EW: We had a rank, if we were captured, of captain. That was it.
EE: And otherwise everybody was the same level?
EW: Well, I was the assistant club director, or something like that, but no more than you'd have as a teacher.
EE: You said "no more than you'd have" in terms of what, salary, or in terms of rank, or in terms of just whatever? It didn't matter what the job was, you had about the same—the same rank, same benefits.
EW: Yeah. I got the same thing with the Red Cross for the first two years that I got when I taught, $150 a month.
EE: An obvious question, it sounds like you enjoyed your work.33
EW: I did. I had nice people to work with.
EE: You were working seven days a week, so this is probably not—You didn't take leave, you didn't get a chance to be a tourist while you over there, did you?
EW: [chuckling] Yes, I did, because I drove the clubmobile. I went hundreds of miles.
EE: Visiting the area?
EW: The area where our airfields were.
EE: Let me ask you a couple questions that you could tell me about, just general [questions]. You were there when was Mussolini killed?
EW: I was there. I don't remember exactly, but I was there.
EE: But you remember when he was killed?
EW: I remember when.
EE: Because I think wasn't he strung up and just beaten to a pulp basically by the folks who—He shot himself, and then they took his body out and they just basically—
EW: They mutilated him. But he was in northern Italy, and I was as far south as you could get without drowning.
EE: Did you have much interaction with the Italian population around you, or were you pretty much confined to the base? You weren't allowed to fraternize?
EW: The southern Italians, for the most part, were like the peons of old. It was an absentee landlord society, and they would almost touch their brow to us. A lot of the men, when I first got over there, were Italian, southern Italian, by family, and I did get invited to their homes, but it was terrible. I mean they were nice, but it was just not—It was like an old frontier.
EE: You were in school at NCCW in the thirties. When was the first time you remember hearing about Hitler?
EW: I think I had some friends who went to Europe who were college-age, in '35 probably.
EE: Were they worried, because Hitler was a great salesman.
EW: No, they thought—
EE: He beefed up their economy. It was like—
Continues in Part Two